American Century US Quality Growth ETF’s management team is rated Average, but a solid investment process still helps this strategy retain its Morningstar Medalist Rating of Silver. The portfolio maintains a cost advantage over competitors, priced within the cheapest fee quintile among peers.  

 The strategy's effective investment philosophy supports an Above Average Process Pillar rating. Independent of the rating, analysis of the strategy's portfolio shows it has maintained a significant overweight position in liquidity exposure and volatility exposure compared with category peers. High liquidity exposure is attributed to stocks with a high trading volume, lending managers more flexibility. And high volatility exposure is rooted in stocks that have a higher standard deviation of returns. The strategy’s management team earns an Average People Pillar rating. The strategy's parent organization earns the firm an Average Parent Pillar rating, and this rating is inherited from vehicles belonging to the same branding entity and is indirectly assigned by an analyst.

Analyst Rating

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Morningstar's evaluation of this security's process aims to determine the likelihood that it will outperform its Morningstar Category index on a risk-adjusted basis over the long term. American Century US Quality Growth ETF earns an Above Average Process Pillar rating. 

The main driver of the rating is that this fund tracks an index. Historical data, like Morningstar's Active/Passive Barometer, finds that passively managed funds have generally outperformed their active counterparts, especially over longer time horizons. The firm's five-year retention rate of 83% also bolsters the process. Lastly, the process is limited by the parent firm's five-year risk-adjusted success ratio of 51%. The measure indicates the percentage of a firm's funds that survived and outperformed their respective category's median Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return for the period. The parent's relatively low success ratio suggests that the firm could do better across its fund lineup.

 This strategy leans toward smaller, more growth-oriented companies than its average peer in the Large Growth Morningstar Category. Looking at additional factor exposure, the fund has held stocks with higher trading volumes compared to Morningstar Category Peers in the past few years. More-liquid assets are easier to buy and sell without adversely moving their prices and tend to provide some ballast during market selloffs. They also are easier to sell to meet redemptions if a host of investors decide to leave the fund in a short period of time. In recent months, the strategy was more exposed to the Liquidity factor compared with its Morningstar Category peers as well. This strategy has also exhibited a tilt toward high-volatility stocks over these years, meaning it has invested in companies that have a higher historical standard deviation of returns. This orientation tends to pay off most prominently when markets are hot. Compared with category peers, the strategy also had more exposure to the Volatility factor in the most recent month. In addition, this strategy has taken on exposure to high-momentum stocks in these years. Momentum is based on the premise that market outperformers will continue to outperform, and laggards will continue to lag. This means that managers are overweighting stocks currently on a winning streak. In recent months, however, the strategy had less Momentum factor exposure over its peers. More information on a fund and its respective category's factor exposure can be found in the Factor Profile module within the Portfolio section. 

 The portfolio is overweight in consumer cyclical and industrials relative to the category average by 6.2 and 4.7 percentage points, respectively. The sectors with low exposure compared to category peers are communication services and financial services, underweight the average by 5.2 and 3.7 percentage points of assets, respectively. The portfolio is positioned across 203 holdings and is diversified among those holdings. In its most recent portfolio, 25.9% of the portfolio's assets were concentrated in the top 10 fund holdings, as opposed to the category’s 54.8% average. And finally, in terms of portfolio turnover, on a year-over-year basis, 203% of the fund's holdings have turned over, whether through increasing, decreasing, or changing a position.

Above Average

Process

American Century’s team is valuable but does not stand out as one of the industry's best, warranting an Average People Pillar rating. There are two managers listed on the fund: Rene Casis, Will Enderle. Together, they manage a total of three strategies, with a Silver asset-weighted average Morningstar Medalist Rating, indicating the potential to deliver positive alpha relative to the category median in aggregate.  

 Note: The People Pillar rating is indirectly assigned by an analyst. The longest-tenured manager of the fund also manages a different product rated by an analyst. Their analyst-assigned People Pillar rating is combined here with the People scores (algorithmic or analyst-assigned) for the fund’s other managers on a tenure-weighted basis.

Average

People

An evolution is taking hold at American Century, but some pluses and minuses continue, supporting a continued Parent rating of Average.
The firm entered the ETF market in 2019 by launching Avantis Investors, led by former executives from Dimensional, a strong firm that manages semi-passive strategies with value tilts and low fees. Avantis is now running roughly a dozen ETFs with similar features, while American Century’s in-house teams manage another 16 active ETFs. This effort is still fairly new and small as a percentage of assets under management, as most ETFs have been launched since 2019, but they help American Century compete with lower-cost passive and strategic-beta funds.
The bulk of the firm’s assets remain in U.S. mutual funds run by its internal boutiques. The U.S. value team has long been a standout, with tenured, stable management and good long-term results, but other investment teams haven’t produced consistently distinctive portfolios or performance, and some have continued to endure investment-professional turnover.
The firm’s ownership structure is noteworthy and supports a long-term strategy. While the firm has worked with a few large minority shareholders, including current 41% stakeholder Nomura, The Stowers Institute for Medical Research owns 45% of the firm but holds 70% of the equity voting rights. Employees own the rest, which should encourage retention.

Parent

American Century U.S. Quality Growth ETF

QGRO tracks an index of large- and mid-cap US stocks. Holdings are selected and weighted by growth and quality factors.

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